Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/155925
Earlier this year, Zepponi & Co., a leading wine industry mergers and acquisitions advisory firm, served as the exclusive financial advisor to Nevada County Wine Guild, which sold Our Daily Red and Orleans Hill, a portfolio of certified-organic and sulfite-free wine brands, to Winery Exchange in Novato, Calif. In another brand-only deal, Zepponi represented Four Vines, a Paso Robles zinfandel and chardonnay producer that sold to the Sonoma County-based Purple Wine Company. "We're involved with a lot of brand-only transactions," said Franklin, who noted that the firm is currently working on several such projects and expects opportunities in brand-only acquisitions to remain consistent, as they have in recent years. LIMIT SKUs FOSTER FILLING A GAP "The buyers of a brand are almost always a larger company, already in the wine business, who are adding that brand to their portfolio for a strategic reason," said Vic Motto, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Global Wine Partners LLC, in St. Helena, Calif. "The brand fills a hole or gap in their portfolio or that brand has found a niche that the buyer can take to another level." FILL IN THE GAP GOOD WILL BUILD TO SELL One of the best examples is the 2005 sale of the Barefoot Cellars brand to E. & J. Gallo Winery for an undisclosed amount. The original owners, Bonnie Harvey and Michael Houlihan, had already taken the homegrown, Sonoma-based business to 600,000 cases at the time of the sale. "It was growing rapidly, but it had outstripped the owners' capacity," said Motto, whose firm represented the sellers in the deal. Gallo has since brought Barefoot to more than 10 million cases and made it the top-selling wine brand in the United States. "Barefoot created something that had magnetic w w w. v w m media.com S e p t - O c t 2 0 13 | V I N E YA R D & W I N E RY M A N A G E M E N T 37